


WE ALL WEAR HELMETS OF OUR OWN, MANDO

by Anonymous



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: AKA what if reader was the jedi instead :thinking:, Episode: s02e08 The Mandalorian, F/M, Fix-It, Introspection, Jedi Reader (Star Wars), M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read, Open Ending, Yearning, gender neutral reader, i dont use pronouns for the reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28208622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: There is a man maybe four or five feet away from you in the next chair twiddling with his thumbs and you are in love with him. You are in love with him but you are in theSlave Iand there are others who would hear your proclamation. You are in love with him but you did not save his son from big scary robots last week because you were too afraid of the consequences. You are in love with him but you have a helmet just like his, and it is transparent and they are all excuses.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 73





	WE ALL WEAR HELMETS OF OUR OWN, MANDO

**Author's Note:**

> [crying] what if ...... reader was the jedi who saves them instead .... and reader is already friends with mando .... so happy ending .... also they are in love
> 
> i might continue this one day. maybe tomorrow. cries. i hope you enjoy

Din doesn’t do much talking on the  _ Slave I. _ Doesn’t talk much at all, actually. Never has. At least he’d tell some dry dad joke and then laugh when Grogu would make the cutest little noise and tilt its adorable little head. 

But at the moment there is no Grogu, only you and three bounty hunters and a New Republic officer and an Imperial scientist they plucked off a ship thirty minutes ago. Dad jokes don’t work on people who don’t have dads. 

Now, Din seldom talks. No more complaining about the uncomfortableness of his pilot chair because his pilot chair was blown to ashes last week and he is not the  _ Slave I’s  _ pilot. No more dry humor when you accidentally drop something on your foot and he props it up with a pillow afterwards as an apology he never needs to make. He nods to the New Republic officer's attempts to cheer him up by regaling him with stories of Nevarro’s magistrate, and gives a few words whenever someone talks about the plan.

That’s all there was. Work work work. Plan plan plan. You wouldn’t be surprised if you knocked on his helmet and all you found was the hollow shell of a person. 

In the night, you knock on his helmet. You climb down from the top bunk the other Mandalorian presented to you with little flair, looking down at the bottom bunk where Din sleeps— or should be sleeping. The helmet stays on when he’s on the  _ Slave I;  _ back when it was only him, Grogu, and you on the  _ Razor Crest,  _ he’ll gladly take it off since you sleep on the other side of the ship. Staring into the visor does little to inform you of whether or not he is asleep— so you knock on the helmet.

You are gentle. Your fist just barely taps the bottom of his helmet and with a jolt, his fingers wrap around your wrist so suddenly and you are frozen like a slab of carbonite. 

“Just— just checking.” You say. His grip is not so gentle. But then the starlight shines through one of the ship’s windows and through the dimness of the room he could make out the outline of your face, and his fingers loosen. 

His helmet tilts. Like father, like son. “For what?”

You chuckle to yourself before answering, reminded of your motives. Who does that? Who actually thinks their friend was secretly replaced by nothing at all, and was now a walking suit of armor? “I wanted to make sure you weren’t a shell of a man.”

“What?” He sighs, or maybe it’s more of a laugh but you’ve heard him laugh no more than twice and the thought of him laughing at you and your stupidity drains the color from your face faster than a knife to the heart would. “I’m alive. I’m right here.”

“I know. It’s just—” 

_ It’s just that you haven’t spoken more than ten words to me since Grogu was taken away. It’s just that I’m afraid for you. For him. It’s just that I can’t tell you. _

“I’m sorry. About Grogu. I can’t even imagine how you feel.” You bite your tongue on the hundreds of words threatening to spill out— that alone was enough, was truth simmered down into the fewest words you could muster. If you were heartbroken seeing the child be kidnapped after less than a year of knowing him, you can’t dare to imagine how Din feels.

Din was right about being  _ alive,  _ you supposed, but you don’t ask him if he feels that way. You imagine his answer being him turning away from you as he clears his throat, waving you off with his hand saying he needs to get rest because there’s a big day ahead of you all tomorrow. You don’t ask him because you’re scared of him saying no.

“You don’t have to apologize.” By now he’s let go of your wrist. Yet it continues to fall into his grasp, not so much grasp but his touch instead as your fingers seem to rest on his hand so lightly. “There was nothing any of us could do.”

You stand there. Is this what it feels to freeze in space? Freezing in space feels less dreadful than this, standing here before a Din who says you mustn’t apologize and holds your hand gently enough that now you feel like you’re burning. Or will burn. Being frozen in space moments before feeling on fire is definitely not healthy.

  
  


You remember standing there the same way you are now but it was last week, atop the first Jedi Temple. The three of you watched a couple of dark troopers fly away with the child,  _ his son,  _ and you stood there with trembling hands and a lightsaber burning a hole in your inner coat pocket. You remember that the lightsaber is too short and that the troopers are too far away and the Force won’t reach, because you are out of practice and far too afraid of the consequences. 

He would kill you, you told yourself. He would be mad if out of nowhere you revealed that you’re a Jedi and that he’s been wandering the galaxy looking for a Jedi when all this time there was one in his co-pilot seat, sleeping on the same ship as him. He would be upset that you didn’t tell him sooner so he wouldn’t have to go to Ahsoka Tano. So he wouldn’t have to go to the first Jedi Temple and place Grogu on the seeing stone and watch his son be taken away by the very man he swears he killed last year. 

If Din was not mad, or does not kill you, someone would. Someone else will see. And then there will be no Jedi by Din’s side anymore. That is how the galaxy works.

So your hand shook. It trembled as you lowered it, and let the troopers go.

You remember a more tranquil time- two weeks ago, Maker, how things have changed- when you dropped a wrench on your foot and it slid across the floor while you were working on a panel Din found malfunctioned years ago but was too busy to fix. Grogu was sitting and began to waddle towards the wrench moments before you held a hand out and the tool started to levitate and float into your grasp like two magnets coming together. 

Back then, Din was in the cockpit staring straight into the stars while asking if you, the wrench, and your foot were fine— but Grogu stared at you with wide eyes. Wider than usual. You lifted a finger to your lips and whispered a plea asking that he says nothing about it to his father, to which he complies. 

The payment was two frogs. It was the easiest deal Grogu will ever make in his long lifetime— he doubts Din can make out any words from his relentless babbling. 

  
  


Your hand pulls away with a jolt. “Yes.” He looks sad at your departure— how could you say he  _ looks  _ sad? Under the beskar? Are you hoping he laments the absence of your hand in his? “Yeah.”

Din shuffles now. Shuffles onto his side, the blanket Boba Fett provided far too small for him that it barely covers his knees. “It’s late.” The stars are always out, though. “We should get some rest. Good night.”

“Yeah.” Yes. Right. They were boarding the light cruiser Grogu was on tomorrow, and a rescue mission would be rather ineffective if two out of the six people boarding started the day restless. Adrenaline can only do so much. You climb the ladder and fall across the bunk, shuffling under the sheet. The lightsaber hidden in your inner pocket pokes your ribs in the most uncomfortable way but you don’t bring yourself to move. “Good night.”

  
  
  


Moff Gideon laughs at the guns. 

It makes sense for him to laugh. His weapon of choice is- or  _ was,  _ you remind yourself, looking at the hilt clipped to Din’s belt- the darksaber. It could cut through guns. It could cut through the dark troopers marching their way to a rhythm much slower than your heartbeat. Moff Gideon erupts in laughter at the guns and Fennec’s sniper rifle and Bo-Katan’s two pistols because he knows they will do nothing to the dark troopers. He saw on the cameras what  _ one  _ did to Din, smashing the front of his helmet without remorse and without taking the time to wonder why the punches weren't penetrating the beskar. 

“Why are you laughing?” New Republic officer Cara Dune asks him with a sharp tongue and loaded machine gun. “You could die right here.”

“I’m laughing because the troopers are going to snap you all like  _ twigs,”  _ another guffaw,  _ “That  _ is why I am laughing.”

Cara Dune kicks his knee. 

You swallow. The blaster quivers in your grip and the lightsaber is all but burning a hole in your pocket. You could use it here— right? No one would kill you or report you to the Empire, right? There was Din and the looming sinking feeling at the thought of him being upset with you, but anger is temporary; his life would last much longer. 

“Mando,” you nod to him besides you, “open the door.”

_ “What?”  _ He looks at you- incredulously, you imagine- then to Grogu, then back at you with a look that brings back the feeling of sinking through a sand pit. “You want me to  _ open it?  _ That’s a death wish.”

You could show him right now. You could take out the lightsaber and wave it in front of his face with ease and he will understand. But then he would argue— say that it is still too dangerous, it is too risky and he doesn’t want you hurt, it is too stupid and you will die before his eyes and he’s seen too many friends die out of his line of sight and doesn’t know how he’ll react when you fall five feet away. 

_ “Please.”  _ You look to Fennec with pleading eyes, asking for her to move instead but she shrugs and shakes her head since this is not her battle but yours. “Do you trust me?”

_ Does _ he trust you? There was once a time where his strides around you were so stiff you could’ve sworn he was a droid in beskar if not for the lack of a robotic voice coming through the modulator. For a month since he invited you aboard the  _ Razor Crest  _ as a powerful ally who Grogu has taken a strange liking to, he slept with his helmet on. It was obvious in the way he said  _ goodnight _ to you before entering his cramped bunk in full armor, and in the morning he’d emerge from sleep with everything on. 

But now— now he holds your hand so gently even when you startle him in the night. He chuckles in the mornings where you can’t find your comb in the darkness of your bunk, coming into the cockpit running your fingers through frizzy tangled hair. 

You stare into the visor of his helmet, straightforward where you imagine his eyes are. There is a man you are in love with standing before you, and you want him to trust you even if he thinks you will die from it. His hands— when did you start to hold his hand?— are smaller than the gloves, so you squeeze a bit to hold his fingers. “Mando. Do you trust me?”

Din stares back, you hope. Then he retracts his hands from your hold and leans over and clicks an orange button and the door opens, and he gives you the lightest shove. 

He trusts you. There is a man before you and you love him and you do not know that he is trembling under all his armor because he trusts that you will not die like everyone else he used to know.

“Please don’t break it.”

  
  


The lightsaber warms your skin when it turns on. It does not burn but yet is warm like his hands around your wrist or his hands holding yours or his hands when he rubs your shoe softly before propping it up with a pillow. You expected it to burn. What burns now are the dark troopers and their wires when you cut through them seamlessly as if you’ve been killing dark troopers for five lifetimes. 

“Come  _ on,”  _ You whine to the camera in the corner of your vision as you plunge the saber into another trooper’s chest. There has to be at least  _ someone  _ watching the cameras intently, and you suppose that if it was anyone it would be him, making sure you do not drop dead under his watch. “Don’t you have that darksaber now, Mando? At  _ least  _ come and help.” 

  
  
  


“You’re a Jedi.” 

It took a minute for him to catch up to you; he struggles with the darksaber since it does not shoot lasers out of it like his blaster does, and it is not sharp at  _ only  _ the tip like his beskar spear. Din does the job however, beheading the poor dark troopers with less effort than it is to spread butter across bread. 

“I am.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because the reason it is so hard to find any Jedi is because any easy-to-find Jedi were murdered years ago,” you reply, “I was… scared. Then I told myself that I would tell you, so I’d be able to teach Grogu myself, but— you know.”

Din sighs. Another trooper down. “I didn’t know what the hell a  _ Jedi  _ was until months ago.” He nods towards the lightsaber in your grip, “If you pulled out a big laser sword before we met Ahsoka Tano, I’d have no idea.”

_ “Lightsaber.” _

“Lightsaber, laser sword,” Din chuckles as he shrugs— you missed this so badly, the sound, the way his shoulders shake up and down for a moment when he laughs— “Same thing.”

“It is absolutely  _ not  _ the same thing.” 

“I don’t know.” He gestures to the darksaber in the head of a dark trooper then the lightsaber preparing to attack another, “I’m a Mandalorian, you’re a Jedi, we both have laser swords, and we’re here together. They would’ve never seen it coming— to them, we are the same.” 

You laugh. Again. Why is it that you always seem to laugh even when he isn’t joking? 

You stand still for a second, in the tranquility between waves of the battalion and the inevitable destruction. There is a man beside you and you love him and he still,  _ still  _ does not know you love him but he is at your side and that will always be more than enough. 

“I guess we are.” 


End file.
